Disaster Predicted

1And the word of Jehovah was to me, saying, 2Thou shalt not take to thee a wife, and sons and daughters shall not be to thee in this place. 3For thus said Jehovah concerning the sons, and concerning the daughters born in this place, and concerning their mothers bearing them, and concerning their fathers begetting them in this land: 4Deaths of diseases shall they die; they shall not be lamented, and they shall not be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth, and by sword and by famine shall they be consumed, and their carcass was for food to the birds of the heavens and to the beasts of the earth.

5For thus said Jehovah, Thou shalt not go in to the house of wailing, and thou shalt not go to lament and thou shalt not deplore for them, for I took away my peace from this people, says Jehovah; kindness and mercies. 6And the great and small died in this land: they shall not be buried, and they shall not lament for them, and none shall cut himself or make bald for them: 7They shall not break bread in mourning to comfort him for the dead; and they shall not give them to drink the cup of consolations for his father and for his mother. 8And to the house of drinking thou shalt not go in to sit with them to eat and to drink. 9For thus said Jehovah of armies, God of Israel: Behold me causing to cease from this place to your eyes and in your days the voice of gladness and the voice of joy, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

10And being when thou shalt announce to this people all these words, and they said to thee, For what did Jehovah speak against us all this great evil? and what our iniquities? and what our sins which we sinned to Jehovah our God? 11And say to them, Because your fathers forsook me, says Jehovah, and went after other gods, and they will serve them and worship to them, and they forsook me, and my law they watched not; 12And ye acted wickedly to do more than your fathers; and behold, you going a man after the stubbornness of his evil heart for not hearing to me. 13And I cast you out from this land upon the land which ye knew not, ye and your fathers; and ye served there other gods day and night, where I will not give to you mercy.

God Will Restore Israel

14For this, behold, the days coming, says Jehovah, and it shall no more be said, Jehovah lives who brought up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt; 15But Jehovah lives who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands where he thrust them away there: and I turned them back upon their land which I gave to their fathers.

16Behold me sending for many fishers, says Jehovah, and they fished them; and after this I will send for many hunters, and they hunted them from every mountain, and from every hill, and from the clefts of the rocks. 17For mine eyes are upon all their ways, and they were not hid from my face, and their iniquity was not concealed from before mine eyes. 18And I requited first double their iniquity and their sin, for their defiling my land, with the carcasses of their abominable things, and their abominations they filled up mine inheritance.

19O Jehovah, my strength and my fortress, and my refuge in days of straits, to thee shall the nations come from the ends of the earth, and they shall say, Surely our fathers inherited falsehood, vanity, and no receiving profit in them.

20Shall man make to himself gods, and they not gods?

21For this, behold me causing them to know in this once, I will cause them to know my hand and my strength; and they shall know that my name is Jehovah.